Having to work at 8:30am on a Saturday morning, especially when you already work 40-hours a week and don�t earn over-time is insult enough, but the injury inflicted by the subway commute can really be too much to bear. There are two things that can happen when you get on a subway that early in the morning on the weekend:

(1) the train ride can go so smoothly that you get to work too early and wish you had stayed in be a half hour longer

or

(2) the train can take forever to come and you can be really late and the only thing that you can use to console yourself is the fact that quite frankly, no matter how early you would have left, you still would have been late.

This past Saturday was a case of the former, but even a smooth train ride can be a strange one, especially on a Saturday.

Monday through Friday I actually, usually, enjoy my commute. There is something about shoving that many people into a small space that promotes a form of seclusion. I take out my book or my magazine, I play a game on my Handspring, I make further cuts and revisions to the guest list for my wedding. . .it’s really useful time and there’s very little person to person interaction necessary. On a Sunday, train preachers come out in full force, more than the average day, and they provide a form of entertainment, and a place to focus your attention which once again minimizes the interaction you have with your fellow, non-preacher commuters. But Saturdays are different.

When I stepped onto a virtually spotless and almost empty C train car at Jay Street-Borough Hall Saturday morning I was actually impressed. The one benefit of going to work that early is the spotless train car. I was enjoying my uneventful commute until, somewhere in lower Manhattan a LARGE man all decked out in Ranger garb got on the train. He sat directly across from me and proceeded to pull out a pack of Parliments and started unwrapping it. I immediately flipped into Super Jamie mode – ‘what am I going to do if he lights up?’ ‘do I go to another car now or wait to see what happens?’ I scanned the car trying to make eye contact with the 2 or 3 other passengers, ‘would they back me up or light up too?’ Luckily, the guy put the pack back in his pocket and I let out what may have been an audible sigh of relief.

But then it happened. I notice the very LARGE man was fiddling with the cigarette pack wrapping. He could tell I was looking at him, not directly at him, but in his general direction and he knew it. I didn’t want to seem too obvious and I could feel my blood pressure raising so I casually looked away and as I turned my head back I saw the wrapper hit the floor. He littered! And he knew he littered. He wasn’t ignorant to the fact that what he was about to do was wrong, he knew it, he waited for me to look away and then he pitched it.

Who raises these people?! It has long been a theory of mine that littering is the true barometer of someone’s character. It is either something that people do when they think no one is looking OR they do it on purpose, which is patently disgusting. Once, a few years ago, while two girls I went to high school with were rollerblading in Central Park one of them (my friend) saw the other one (not my friend) leave her empty water bottle in the bushes. My friend said: “Are you just going to leave that there?” and the other girl said: “Well, I don’t want to carry it and they do PAY people to pick it up, don’t they?” I have avoided that girl as much as possible since hearing of that incident, but it did confirm everything I had always thought of her.

But back to 2004 and this past Saturday morning . . .I wondered who would get off the train first, me, or the LARGE man. If I got off first, I could pick the cellophane up off the pristine floor between his legs and say “I’ll get that for you.” Or, if he got off first, I could say, “Excuse me, you dropped something over there.” Or better yet, “Do you have children? Do you let them litter?!” But I held my breath and watched as he got off at 34th Street. . .I really really wanted to say something, but it was only 8:15 in the morning. . .on a Saturday!